Julius Bautista

Figuring Catholicism: An Ethnohistory of the Santo Niño de Cebu^**
Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2010
^**Finalist: 30th Philippine National Book Awards for Best Book in the Social Sciences, 2011
**Finalist: 33rd Catholic Mass Media Awards (Jaime Cardinal Sin Book Prize), 2011

This book is about a statue of Jesus Christ as a boy, The Santo Niño, which is worshipped by millions of Filipino Roman Catholics today. The author combines ethnography with historiography and discourse analysis to study how our most prevalent assumptions about Roman Catholicism are produced and disseminated. In doing so, the book describes the contours of a “figured” Catholicism as the context in which we can think about the Roman Catholicism in the Philippines and beyond.

Reviewers’ comments:
“Figuring Catholicism is an engaging and finely balanced book, well-written with clear and lucid prose. While theoretically sophisticated—for instance, the imprints of Michel Foucault are discernible—the author’s claims are judiciously supported by an array of ethnographic and empirical details gleaned from a close textual analysis of historical records and literary works.” (Social Science Diliman 7:2, 99-102)

“What is impressive is in the way [the author] arranges his narrative such that it emerges in a well-stitched analytic design… This book is an eye-opener.” (TALAD, Journal of San Carlos Major Seminary 7(1): 114-118)

“Bautista shines new light upon the nature of Catholicism both inside Asia's largest Christian nation, as well as beyond it. The study's ambitious interdisciplinary approach opens up many new and intriguing avenues for further inquiry into contemporary religious life in the Philippines.” (Professor Sally Ann Ness, University of California Riverside, external reviewer)